4 ms·

Well, we're on year 3 of developers being out of jobs in 6 months. Maybe 5 or 10 years things will change, but at this point I can't see myself being replaced

Well, we're on year 3 of developers being out of jobs in 6 months. Maybe 5 or 10 years things will change, but at this point I can't see myself being replaced without some sort of paradigm shift, which is not what the current brand of AI improvements are offering - it seems like they are offering iterations of the same thing over and over, each generation slightly more refined or with more ability to generate output based upon its own output - so I see no reason to assume my job is in jeopardy just because it might be at some later date. Someone needs to tell me what exactly is going to change to cause this sudden shift in what AI can do, because right now I don't see it. It seems to have given people a licence to suggest science fiction be treated like a business plan.

IshKebab 1y ago
Nothing fundamental needs to change. It just needs to get smarter and more reliable. And don't think that because the crazy "everything will be AI in 6 months" predictions predictably haven't come to pass that that means it won't ever happen. I'm old enough to remember the failure of online clothes shopping in the dot-com era. Sometimes things just take a while.
- SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
  If you're old enough to remember dot-com you're old enough to remember when low code and WYSIWYG were both supposedly the death knell for developers. Sure it not yet happening doesn't mean it won't ever happen, but it also no evidence that it will. When the latest apocalypse cult fails to predict the end of the world does that make you more or less convinced that the world will end the next time someone yells it? The longer this future developer apocalypse is delayed the less credible it seems.
  - IshKebab 1y ago
    > low code and WYSIWYG were both supposedly the death knell for developers. I mean... hopefully it is really obvious why those are very different!
    - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
      The tech is different, sure, but they were all attempts to replace developers with business users by hiding the code. Hasn't worked so far because it turns out there's more to being a good developer than just code, but it's still what people try over and over.
      - skydhash 1y ago
        Code is ossified design. The whole problem is coming up with the design and dealing with both essentials and accidental complexities. Writing the code is routine work. The only difference from other design works is that we often go back and forth as we can start coding as soon as we want. It's like how building an house is pretty much logistic and repetitive works. Designing an house is complex enough that you requires a degree and years of experience before you're trusted to do it well.
      - IshKebab 1y ago
        That's not why low-code or WYSIWYG failed. I mean arguably they didn't fail - Squarespace and Notion seem to be doing fine. But the reason they didn't fully replace most developers is that people generally want to do things that are outside the capabilities of the platforms. They aren't generic enough for every use case. AI is fundamentally different in that regard. There should be a name for this fallacy - the previous attempts failed therefore all attempts will fail.
        SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
        Sure, same with the "This time is fundamentally different" fallacy. See my previous comment about apocalyptic cults. Important to note I'm not saying there is no technology ever that won't fill that gap, GenAI probably would, but I'm not at all convinced that LLMs are the right tech to do everything that needs to be done to replace devs.
        IshKebab 1y ago
        I mean, if you can't tell the fundamental difference between AI and low code/WYSIWYG I don't know what to say...
- ripe 1y ago
  > Nothing fundamental needs to change. It just needs to get smarter and more reliable. But these are the precise improvements that require a fundamental change to how these systems work. So far, no one has figured out how to make AI systems achieve this. And yet, we're supposed to believe that tinkering with LLMs will get us there Real Soon Now.
georgemcbay 1y ago
I totally agree as a developer (who sometimes uses LLMs). They can be a useful tool, but their current capabilities and (I personally believe) their ability to improve indefinitely are wildly overhyped. And the industry as a whole has some sort of blinders on, IMO, related to how progress made with them is lumpy and kind of goes in both directions in the sense that every time someone introduces their grand new model and I play around with it I'll find some things it is better at than the previous version and some things it is worse at than the previous version. But number go up, so progress... I guess? On one hand I can laugh this all off as yet another management fad (and to be clear, I don't think LLM usage is a fad, just the idea that this is going to be world-changing technology rather than just another tool), but what scares me most about the current AI hype isn't whether LLMs will take all of our jobs, but rather the very real damage that is likely to be caused by the cadre of rich and now politically powerful people who are pushing for massive amounts of energy production to power all of this "AI". Some of them are practically a religious cult in that they believe in human-caused climate change, but still want to drastically ramp up power production to absurd levels by any means necessary while handwaving away the obvious impact this will have by claiming that whatever damage is caused by the ramp up in power production will be solved when the benevolent godlike AI that comes out on the other side will fix it for us. Yeah, I uh don't see it working out that way. At all.
- AnimalMuppet 1y ago
  Seems to me that, if "make the decisions that will save us" is handed over to AI-in-the-present-form, it would be somewhere between damaging and catastrophic, with or without climate damage from the power generation.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
monknomo 1y ago
I figure if it can replace devs, any job that types is pretty much at risk, and we will all be in such trouble that there is no point in planning for that scenario
- IshKebab 1y ago
  Coding jobs are maybe one of the easier ones to replace since there's so much public training material and it's fundamentally language based. But yeah I think I agree. By the time my job is actually fully redundant, society is fucked anyway.

IshKebab 1y ago

Nothing fundamental needs to change. It just needs to get smarter and more reliable. And don't think that because the crazy "everything will be AI in 6 months" predictions predictably haven't come to pass that that means it won't ever happen. I'm old enough to remember the failure of online clothes shopping in the dot-com era. Sometimes things just take a while.

SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
If you're old enough to remember dot-com you're old enough to remember when low code and WYSIWYG were both supposedly the death knell for developers. Sure it not yet happening doesn't mean it won't ever happen, but it also no evidence that it will. When the latest apocalypse cult fails to predict the end of the world does that make you more or less convinced that the world will end the next time someone yells it? The longer this future developer apocalypse is delayed the less credible it seems.
- IshKebab 1y ago
  > low code and WYSIWYG were both supposedly the death knell for developers. I mean... hopefully it is really obvious why those are very different!
  - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
    The tech is different, sure, but they were all attempts to replace developers with business users by hiding the code. Hasn't worked so far because it turns out there's more to being a good developer than just code, but it's still what people try over and over.
    - skydhash 1y ago
      Code is ossified design. The whole problem is coming up with the design and dealing with both essentials and accidental complexities. Writing the code is routine work. The only difference from other design works is that we often go back and forth as we can start coding as soon as we want. It's like how building an house is pretty much logistic and repetitive works. Designing an house is complex enough that you requires a degree and years of experience before you're trusted to do it well.
    - IshKebab 1y ago
      That's not why low-code or WYSIWYG failed. I mean arguably they didn't fail - Squarespace and Notion seem to be doing fine. But the reason they didn't fully replace most developers is that people generally want to do things that are outside the capabilities of the platforms. They aren't generic enough for every use case. AI is fundamentally different in that regard. There should be a name for this fallacy - the previous attempts failed therefore all attempts will fail.
      - SketchySeaBeast 1y ago
        Sure, same with the "This time is fundamentally different" fallacy. See my previous comment about apocalyptic cults. Important to note I'm not saying there is no technology ever that won't fill that gap, GenAI probably would, but I'm not at all convinced that LLMs are the right tech to do everything that needs to be done to replace devs.
        IshKebab 1y ago
        I mean, if you can't tell the fundamental difference between AI and low code/WYSIWYG I don't know what to say...
ripe 1y ago
> Nothing fundamental needs to change. It just needs to get smarter and more reliable. But these are the precise improvements that require a fundamental change to how these systems work. So far, no one has figured out how to make AI systems achieve this. And yet, we're supposed to believe that tinkering with LLMs will get us there Real Soon Now.

georgemcbay 1y ago

I totally agree as a developer (who sometimes uses LLMs). They can be a useful tool, but their current capabilities and (I personally believe) their ability to improve indefinitely are wildly overhyped. And the industry as a whole has some sort of blinders on, IMO, related to how progress made with them is lumpy and kind of goes in both directions in the sense that every time someone introduces their grand new model and I play around with it I'll find some things it is better at than the previous version and some things it is worse at than the previous version. But number go up, so progress... I guess? On one hand I can laugh this all off as yet another management fad (and to be clear, I don't think LLM usage is a fad, just the idea that this is going to be world-changing technology rather than just another tool), but what scares me most about the current AI hype isn't whether LLMs will take all of our jobs, but rather the very real damage that is likely to be caused by the cadre of rich and now politically powerful people who are pushing for massive amounts of energy production to power all of this "AI". Some of them are practically a religious cult in that they believe in human-caused climate change, but still want to drastically ramp up power production to absurd levels by any means necessary while handwaving away the obvious impact this will have by claiming that whatever damage is caused by the ramp up in power production will be solved when the benevolent godlike AI that comes out on the other side will fix it for us. Yeah, I uh don't see it working out that way. At all.

AnimalMuppet 1y ago
Seems to me that, if "make the decisions that will save us" is handed over to AI-in-the-present-form, it would be somewhere between damaging and catastrophic, with or without climate damage from the power generation.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]

monknomo 1y ago

I figure if it can replace devs, any job that types is pretty much at risk, and we will all be in such trouble that there is no point in planning for that scenario

IshKebab 1y ago
Coding jobs are maybe one of the easier ones to replace since there's so much public training material and it's fundamentally language based. But yeah I think I agree. By the time my job is actually fully redundant, society is fucked anyway.